one.

more worthy person has provided, at the expense, it may be, of all the highest opportunities of lite. Likewise the miser forgets to set down the losses he suffers socially, intellectually, spiritually, and, as he sees the gold coming in from his rents and usuries, he counts it all clear gain, and flatters himself that his business is a paying There are others who neglect to make the proper entries on the gain side. The farmer and the mechanic are prone to put down only the crops and the stock, and the money proceeds of their labor, forgetting the solid home comforts, the physical strength and vigor, and the hearty enjoyment of rest which their labor brings, and which money can not buy. Let them give those items their proper place, and they will be convinced that in their labor is profit.

These are but representative classes. We are all making great mistakes in the reckoning of our accounts. The natural tendency is to let our lives out for so much, expressed in dollars and cents. We value our professional skill, our brains, our time, the work of our hands, according to their proceeds in gold and silver, in merchandise, lands, or bank stocks. We forget that in the use of that skill, that time and those brains, our chief gain is in the growth and strength of character we are acquiring, and that these material considerations are but the scaffolding by which we may mount to higher planes of action. In asking the question then, so vital and practical to all in this life, why not consider first of all what real and eternal good is to accrue to us from any proposed line of action; and let these sordid, perishing things take the secondary place they deserve? At the close of life, when we are called to make our final balance and render our account to the Judge of all

the earth, it will be sad to discover that we have made an irretrievable mistake; to find that the things in which we have been willing to take our pay have been but dust and ashes; to realize that for the outlay of a whole life-time, with all its opportunities for laying up treasures incorruptible, we have no income to show. Our bank accounts, our stocks, our lands, our merchandise will be of no avail, and we shall stand bankrupt. Only that which we have spent in the service of the Lord can then bring us any credit. If all our life with its blessings and privileges has been used in that service, then and then only will our account stand balanced and approved.

"Ye can not serve God and Mammon." Which is the better paymaster? Yea, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" CANDACE LHAMON,

THAT SWEETER SONG.

"Make life and death, and that vast forever,

One grand, sweet song.-KINGsley.

One of the every-day triumphs of Christianity is seen in the purpose that it gives to lives that would otherwise be meager and commonplace. A man of ordinary intellect and opportunities may be, when unawakened to the dignity and responsibility of living, an ordinary man, but if filled with enthusiasm for the Master's work, he may become a power.

Every student of English literature remembers the story of Cadmon. According to the legend, Cadmon, while in the hall of feasting, amidst the notes of the harps and the merry laughter of the crowd, had no song to sing. He was so chagrined to think he could not share in the festivities as did the rest, that he went out and flung himself down in the stable. There he fell asleep, and dreamed that a heavenly voice said to him, "Sing me a song." In vain he pleaded his inability, and in his sleep, so the quaint tradition runs, he found himself uttering those stanzas of praise to God, through which he is known to the world.

There is many a humble life, having no voice for the merriment of this world, that once brought into accord with the divine harmony, will breathe its faith. in glad and grateful notes of praise.

'BURNING" THE DEAD IN INDIA.

[From a recent book of Explorations in India, we get the very suggestive paragraphs which follow.]

We noticed several human skulls bleaching upon the sand-bars in the river, and just below Etawah we witnessed a Hindoo funeral. The procession came filing along the bank, about twenty low-caste men, four of whom bore the corpse on a litter on their shoulders. They wore their ordinary business suits, simple waist-cloths only; some carried straw, one carried an armful of wood, and all chanted a monotonous dirge. They reached a spot close to a ruined temple, where the bank almost overhung the water, and the current was both deep and swift. There were bare, black spots upon the edge of the bank, as if the same ceremony for which they had come had often been performed there before.

A bed of straw was spread close to the edge of the bank, and the corpse laid upon it. The body was wrapped from head to foot in a red cotton cloth. Then more straw was piled upon the body, and a very little wood upon that, after which one of the relatives touched a lighted match to the straw. The mourners sat down upon their heels in a group to windward of the pile, and chatted sociably while they watched it burn. The wind was strong, and it burned fiercely for about three minutes, then very moderately for about ten more, by the end of which time the fuel was all

consumed.

Then the mourners arose, dipped water

out of the river, and drowned out the fire; the corpse lay there almost intact. . Presently one

mourner put a stout stick under the neck, another put another stick under the hips, and at the word the carcass was tumbled over the edge of the bank, and fell into the water with a loud splash. A few yards farther down, it reappeared at the surface for a moment, upon which one of the cremators reached out with his stick and pushed it under, after which we saw it no more.

All the ashes and bits of wood were thrown into the river and the spot washed clean, after which the mourners took their departure.

That body-burning was a mere shallow pretense, and might just as well have been dispensed with, for all it amounted to in reality. But religion is religion, and the forms at least must be carried out.

In some portions of India, where fuel is exceedingly scarce and dear, the poorest of the low-caste natives fulfill the letter of their religion by simply putting a live coal upon the tongue of the corpse, and they call this "burning." After all, is not that as sensible and complete a "burning" as a few drops of water sprinkled upon one's head is a "baptism," a "burial" with Christ? To my mind, one is no less absurd than the other.